New Depths of Racial Profiling Exposed

July 27, 2012

On Wednesday, the AP came out with a story about a peculiar 911 call in New Jersey from June of 2009:

A building superintendent at an apartment complex just off the Rutgers University campus called the New Brunswick Police 911 line in June 2009. He said his staff had been conducting a routine inspection and came across something suspicious

"What's suspicious?" the dispatcher asked.

"Suspicious in the sense that the apartment has about - has no furniture except two beds, has no clothing, has New York City Police Department radios."

When the New Brunswick police and the FBI rushed to the scene (as is typical when empty apartments are found full of "pictures of terrorists" and "pictures of [the] neighboring building"), they were surprised to find that it was indeed the NYPD's equipment -- no one had told them the NYPD had staked out a spot in town.

 

The equipment-filled apartment was part of the NYPD's post-9/11 surveillance of Muslims in New York, and, in this case, outside of New York. Clandestine out-of-state operations, like in this New Jersey apartment, were places where the NYPD "kept files on innocent sermons, recorded the names of political organizers in police documents and built databases of where Muslims lived and shopped, even where they were likely to gather to watch sports." The debacle quickly became an embarrassment for the NYPD, as it had to ask for its materials back from the FBI.  Furthermore, the NYPD was resistant to releasing any information about the incident; they only did so when the AP sued.
 
This incident is the continuation of a long trend of religious and racial profiling by the NYPD.  Earlier this year, news that Muslim students at Columbia University, my school, were being spied on without reasonable cause shocked and disgusted our community.  In February, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger aptly stated, "We should all be able to appreciate the deeply personal concerns of the Muslim members of our community in learning that their activities were being monitored — and the chilling effect such governmental efforts have on any of us in a university devoted to the foundational values of free speech and association."
 
The ACLU echoes this sentiment, and also is leading the effort to stop warrantless religious and racial profiling.  Back in February, the ACLU and the NYCLU called on New York City and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to investigate this unconstitutional surveillance. Arthur Eisenberg, NYCU legal director, added that, "In directing surveillance against Muslims engaged in perfectly lawful activity, the NYPD has effectively imposed a badge of suspicion on all Muslims and has stigmatized communities of individuals based upon their religious affiliations."  
 
As more abuses and details of surveillance come to light, the ACLU is continually wary of any blanket surveillance of groups of civilians based on crude profiling. Furthermore, surveillance like this is also blatantly illegal.  Due to a federal court order, the NYPD is prohibited from maintaining dossiers on people unless there's reason to believe that they are or were engaged in illegal activity.  Right now, all of those under surveillance are apparently committing the crime of merely being Muslim.  Thankfully, criticism and calls for oversight of the NYPD's actions are gaining traction.  In April, the ACLU sent a letter to the Inspector General about the FBI's surveillance of legal Muslim activity; in May, members of the House called for a purge of the databases full of information gained by spying on Muslim neighborhoods; in June, 22 members of Congress sent a letter to the Inspector General of the Department of Justice urging an investigation.  
 
For more information or to access the underlying governmental documents referenced in the ACLU's letter, read the ACLU alerts on FBI improper targeting of American Muslim Communities.

Caitlin Lowell is a summer intern for the ACLU of Maine.  She is a rising sophomore at Columbia who is pursuing a double major in political science and American studies.